Every chef we asked salts pasta water differently

“Salt it like the sea” is the advice everyone repeats. It is also wrong: the sea is far too salty, and pasta cooked in seawater would be unpleasant. So how much salt should go in the pot? We asked twelve cooks, from home kitchens to busy restaurants.

The answers

• The most common answer was about 10 g of salt per litre, roughly two teaspoons.

• Three cooks used less, around 7 g per litre, because their sauces were already salty.

• One restaurant chef used 15 g per litre and salted her sauces very lightly.

• Two cooks refused to measure at all and simply tasted.

Taste the water. If it tastes like nothing, the pasta will too.

The difference between answers was mostly about the sauce. A salty sauce with anchovies, olives or cheese needs less salt in the water. A simple tomato or butter sauce needs more.

The one useful rule

Start at 10 g per litre. Taste the water: it should taste pleasantly seasoned, like a good soup, not like the sea. Adjust next time based on your sauce.

And the oil?

Every cook agreed on one thing: do not put oil in the water. It floats on top and does nothing to stop pasta sticking. Stirring in the first minute does that job.

A few more things the cooks agreed on

Use a big pot. Pasta cooked in a small amount of water releases starch into a thick, sticky liquid, which makes it clump. Around a litre of water for every 100 g of pasta is a good guide.

Save a mug of the cooking water before you drain. Its starch and salt help sauces cling to the pasta and turn glossy. Almost every cook we spoke to called it the most useful single habit in pasta cooking.

Finally, finish cooking the pasta in the sauce for the last minute. It absorbs flavour, the sauce thickens slightly, and the whole dish tastes like it was made on purpose rather than assembled.